UPDATE:
They did finally come out and repair our machine. The guy who came out had a good attitude and pretty much fixed what he could. The C-axis lathe seems to work ok (we've not really used it yet) but the flat belt wheel gear (aluminum) that they installed on it was chewed up bad when they installed it on the shaft back at the factory. The tech here tried to tell us that it would be ok, but I know enough about flat toothed belts to know that chewed up parts of the wheel would wear out the belt prematurely. They sent us a replacement wheel free of charge (6 weeks later).
The above illustrates a difference between US and European customer service mentality and the typical Chinese mentality. Here, when we finally convinced the technician that the part needed to be replaced he said, Ok, we'll send it out later when you order some the other parts (we wanted to purchase more tool holder forks). This meant that we will need to install this press-fit thing on the shaft ourselves later. A US or Euro company if the technician discovered a substandard part was sent by the factory (e.g. the wheel with the bad teeth) they would have been on the phone instantly and had the part sent out FedEx before they left and their technician would have installed it.
They did not get the oil system working - they sent a part later that the tech broke trying to fix it, but they did not adjust the system to work properly. It still gives too much oil to some parts (dripping on your parts on the table!!) and other parts too dry - zero oil. We have turned it off and now must remember to go around and manually give oil all over the place - inconvenient but it works.
One other thing that really irritated us in the whole process with Guangdaly - when we were having difficulty with the customer service manager and were not happy, we tried repeatedly to contact the owner of the company to try to work out a solution. The owner was all smiles and very friendly when we were buying the machine and the first time we came out to look at the machine in process. He took us to a nice lunch etc. Nice guy. BUT, when we had problems - he was unreachable. We sent mulitple requests by email, fax and text message asking to speak with him and all we got was SILENCE - no response. This is not a giant corporation; this is an owner who is onsite at the factory (perhaps 100 - 200 employees), a man whom we have met, but when there was a problem we could not reach him. We tried calling and text messaging his cell number multiple times - no response except 2 or maybe 3 times in 9 months he actually answered our call. This is unacceptable. When a customer of my company is dissatisfied, I, as the owner, WANT to know about it and I want to talk to the customer. Is it fun talking to a dissatisfied customer? - No, but it is important and part of my responsibility as the owner AND important to making a happy long term customer. Customer satisfaction is very important. Sometimes you still can't make the customer happy, but usually talking to the owner gets things worked and you have a happy customer. If he had taken our calls or responded to an email it would have gone a long way toward us being more satisfied.
I will continue to update this post with our experience with Guangdaly. If we have a problem, I will post here the quality of their response to our repair problems and needs in the future – time, attitude, quality of the repairs, etc. My hope is that this company can grow into a mature company that can properly service its customers.
In general, I would say that most companies in China are an order of magnitude behind the average American company when it comes to customer service. Most American companies know that machine down time costs you money and they build reputations for fast service to get your machine up and working quickly. Most Chinese companies will not perform quickly unless you still owe them money (and in our case that still did not make a difference). So if you are thinking to buy a Chinese made machine - be prepared for poor customer service.  |